NEW YORK (5 Mar 2014)- The United Nations Post-2015 One Secretariat highlighted progress and emerging findings from the UN Millennium Development Campaign’s newest platforms to capture citizen’s voices, priorities and views to inform the post-2015 agenda: The MY World survey, and The World We Want, during a side session of the Ninth Session of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals on 4 March 2014 . Representatives from the the President of the General Assembly’s Office, Permanent Missions to the UN, UN Agencies and its affiliates, Civil Societies, Youth Organizations, and Students and Professors participated in the session.

This event – significant in the unification of decision makers, policy influencers and advocates — highlighted the results of MY World and the World We Want. To date 1.5 million votes have been captured since the survey originally became available online, by SMS, and by paper ballot in early 2013, and since it was officially launched in September 2013 by the UN Secretary General. In tandem, the World We Want hosts the 88 national and 11 thematic consultations that have taken place to capture the voice of civil societies. Both of these platforms have been gathering people’s voices to better inform the decision making process for the post-2015 development agenda, the major negotiations of which are ongoing through September 2014. The survey will be available until December 2015.
The survey takes special care to ensure that even the most vulnerable groups have access to the vote. “We found that many people did not have access to the website and that SMS was primarily used by men,” began Mr. Sering Falu Njie, Deputy Director, UN Millennium Campaign. “The most wonderful part of this survey is not only that it is available online, but that we have amazing support from over 700 partners at country level who are going out with paper and pen and making sure that even grandmothers, or young children in remote villages can vote. In addition, we are incorporating civil society led consultations side by side with the UNDG led consultations and sustainable development solution databases. This consolidates the various inputs on the World We Want platform, making it a one-stop-shop for the post-2015 sustainable development conversation.”
Following the short speeches, members of the UN Millennium Campaign assisted visitors in accessing the data on the various TV screens located around the exhibit. It is currently in the UNICEF Danny Kaye Visitors Center lobby.